


Give Me a Leonard Cohen Afterworld

by victoria_p (musesfool)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-11
Updated: 2007-03-11
Packaged: 2017-10-03 21:38:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musesfool/pseuds/victoria_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam wakes up one morning, and it's as if he's living the life he'd always dreamed of having. There's just one small problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Give Me a Leonard Cohen Afterworld

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Amberlynne and SullenSiren for handholding, and to luzdeestrellas for betaing. Title from Nirvana.

Sam wakes up, and the first thing he realizes is that someone else is in bed with him--there's an arm draped across his belly and a pair of feet tucked against his calves. He freezes. He hasn't woken up like this since Jess died, and he wonders if he's really awake at all, if this is just another nightmare, and if, when he opens his eyes, he'll see her burning on the ceiling. But the pressure in his bladder is too strong, and he hasn't wet the bed since he was seven, and he's sure as hell not going to do it now. He can just imagine Dean's reaction, and that spurs him to open his eyes.

Sunlight is streaming in through the windows, and he's disoriented for a second, because the room is as familiar as breathing, and not the room he went to sleep in the night before.

"Sam?" Jess blinks at him sleepily, elbow digging into his ribs as she pushes herself up to look at him. She shoves her hair out of her face and smiles, and now he _knows_ it's a dream, because there's no way she can be here. He flinches back from her instinctively, and immediately feels guilty about it when she says, "Sam, honey, you okay? You look kind of green."

He swallows hard, lunges out of bed towards the bathroom, and barely makes it to the toilet in time to puke his guts out.

When he's done, he rests his forehead against the cool porcelain of the sink and tries to will himself awake. His legs are cramping from being bent in an odd position, and the tile is uncomfortable, and he still has to piss like a racehorse, so maybe he's awake after all.

He opens his eyes again, and Jess is still standing over him with a concerned look on her face.

It's not her. It can't be her. He tries to think of some way he can catch out whatever it really is, make it stop wearing her face, talking in her voice. He comes up blank, because she looks exactly like Jess, even _smells_ like her, like the Lubriderm she slathered on her skin right before bed, and the detergent they used to use to wash their clothes. He comes up blank, because he wants so badly for it to _be_ her, even though he knows it's impossible.

"I've gotta take a leak," he mutters and closes the door so he doesn't have to look at her anymore, afraid he might be sick again. He empties his bladder and washes his hands, splashes cold water on his face. There's no pain in his head, and nobody's dying yet, so it doesn't feel like a vision, but everything is _wrong_, and the _wrongness_ of it is making him queasy.

"Sam?" Jess knocks at the door. "Are you all right? You've been in there a while." He grunts in response, and she says, "I knew that last round of shots was a terrible idea. You never listen, though."

Last round of shots? The last thing Sam remembers is sitting at the bar while Dean hit on a redhead with a pinched face and hungry eyes. He remembers thinking she was much prettier when she laughed, and Dean must have thought so as well, because he was really working the charm.

Before that, they'd spent the day confirming that Elena Jimenez was, in fact, a woman in white, finding out where she'd been buried, and burning her bones. He remembers trying not to knock anything over in the tiny, cramped _botánica_ her parents owned, which smelled of herbs and dust. Dean was peering at the shelves, hands hovering over the merchandise, obviously itching to touch, because Dean's never been able to refrain from touching stuff, even stuff he's not supposed to. Especially stuff he's not supposed to.

Sam doesn't remember anything about doing shots at all.

He dries his face and opens the door. "I have to call Dean," he says, searching the room for his cell phone. He turns out the pockets of his jeans, finds a buck fifty in change, a linty stick of gum, and a dirty tissue, but no phone.

Jess stops, looks startled. "What?"

"Dean. My brother, Dean." As if there were anyone else he could be talking about, even though he'd spent three years trying not to ever talk about Dean at all, even when she'd asked. He closes his eyes, forces back the fear and frustration. "I--Something's wrong."

She stares at him for a long moment. "Yeah, and whatever it is, that's not funny. Are you still drunk?"

"I'm not exactly laughing, either, Jess, and no, I'm not drunk." He pushes a hand through his hair. "Something freaky is going on here--"

"Yeah, I'm getting that, but you can't exactly call up your dead brother and--"

His stomach lurches again and he has to fight down the sour taste of bile before he can speak again. "My _what_?"

Jess's face changes, softens, and she reaches up, puts a hand on his forehead, as if the something wrong is with him. "Sam," she says, and there's a slight quiver of fear in her voice, "your brother's been dead for twenty-two years."

*

Jess eyes him warily, doesn't want to leave him alone, but he manages to convince her he's just having a weird reaction to a really vivid dream, intensified by the lingering effects of the tequila he allegedly drank last night.

He waits until he hears the spray of the shower going full blast before he fumbles with the cell phone--it's not his, despite what Jess says (and he can't stop thinking of her as Jess, though he's still not sure she actually _is_ Jess, as much as he _wants_ her to be). He's never seen this phone before, though it was in his jacket pocket, but he scrolls down through the contact names and there's nothing listed between Dad-cell and Deb Morrison.

He dials Dad's number without thinking, paces the bedroom like a caged lion--if he had a tail, he'd be lashing it in anxiety--and prepares himself for his father's inscrutable voicemail, remembering the endless game of phone tag they'd played last year.

He remembers the sight and smell of his father's body burning, and reminds himself that there won't be an answer at all. The ache of it nearly chokes him.

Two and a half rings in, he thinks about ending the call, but his father answers. "Sam?"

He'd thought he'd never hear that voice again, and something in him breaks when he does. The words come tumbling out in one long, breathless string. "Dad, something's wrong. Dean is missing. I think the demon took him or something."

"Whoa, Sam, slow down. Have you been drinking?" He hears a woman's voice in the background, and his father's voice is muffled, like he's got a hand over the mouthpiece, when he says, "It's Sam." The soft hum of the woman's voice, and then, "He's asking about Dean."

"No, Dad. I woke up this morning and everything's _wrong_. You're not--You're supposed to be--" He stops, can't make himself say the words, not when he's hearing his father's voice for the first time in months. "I think the demon is fucking with me."

"Demon? Sam, what are you talking about? Are you sure you're not drunk?"

"I swear, I'm not. Jesus, Dad, Dean is missing and--" His father inhales sharply, and then there's the sound of the phone being passed from one pair of hands to another.

The woman's voice, now. "Sammy, honey, are you running a fever?"

He freezes for a second, then, "Who is this?"

"Sam, what's wrong?"

"Who is this?" His voice is rising in demand, almost panicked now, because it can't be--

"This is your mother, Sam. Please tell me what's wrong."

He hangs up, drops the phone like it's on fire.

*

He's pulling his shirt on when he looks in the mirror and sees the pentacle sketched on the skin of his lower back in black ink that's already fading.

"What did you do?" he demands, twisting around to show Jess.

"Sam, what--"

He grabs her shoulders, panic making him rough where he's never been rough before. "The pentacle, the writing--What did you do to me? To Dean?"

"Sam, you're scaring me," she says, and he lets go immediately, ashamed and yet still desperate to know. She crosses her arms over her chest, hugs herself.

"I'm sorry, I just--Something's wrong, Jess. And if it's not you, it's me." He can't breathe, can't think, though he knows he has to calm down, or he's never going to figure out what's going on. He forces himself to inhale, holds it 'til the count of five, and then breathes out again. Remembers.

Since he'd been possessed, Dean has taken to drawing protective symbols on him in his sleep. "Maybe we should tattoo 'em on," he'd said. "Chicks dig tats, and having a devil's trap inked on your skin couldn't hurt." Sam had resisted, saying Bobby's charms would be good enough, but Dean, being Dean, has persisted, so every few days, Sam wakes up with protective symbols drawn on his skin in black ink.

"I don't--I don't understand," Jess says.

He thinks of all the lies he told her, all the truths he didn't, and feels another wave of guilt. "No, of course not. You wouldn't. No reason you should." He pulls his shirt on, holds a hand out in apology. She takes it, fits herself against him, and he breathes in the scent of her hair, revels in the feel of her skin beneath the pads of his fingers, the taste of her mouth when he kisses her, heat and need and toothpaste. This is Jess, his Jess--no skinwalker or shapeshifter could be her so perfectly that he wouldn't know--and yet he knows it's impossible, because he watched her die, for real, and not just in his nightmares.

Maybe, a small voice in the back of his mind whispers, that was yet another nightmare, and this is reality. He pushes it aside, breaks away from her embrace before he lets himself get lost in it, forgets why it can't be happening, as much as he wants it to be.

*

He doesn't have any fraudulent credit cards in his wallet, so to buy his ticket, he uses the one that says, Sam Winchester on it and hopes he doesn't get flagged as a wanted criminal.

Jess insists on accompanying him--she keeps shooting worried looks in his direction, and it should be annoying, but even while he's freaking out, he's glad she's with him--and he hopes his Visa card can handle the cost, because he's never ruined his own credit, and he honestly doesn't plan to start now, but he can hear Dean saying some things are more important than his credit rating, and this isn't real, anyway. That's what he keeps telling himself, waiting for the moment he wakes up screaming.

The plane ride is quiet, smooth, but he can't stop fidgeting.

Jess squeezes his hand. "Why are you humming?" she asks.

He hadn't even realized he was, but yeah, he is and now that he knows, he stutters and stops, unsure if that's really how "Wherever I May Roam" goes, even though if he's heard it once, he's heard it a million times over the course of his life.

"It calms me down," he says, thinking of Dean.

She looks skeptical. "I didn't know you were a nervous flier."

"I'm not. I just--Something's _wrong_, Jess." Dean's not dead, and you are, he thinks, but can't bring himself to say. "I saw Dean last night." He's probably going nuts, waiting for me to snap out of this, whatever it is. The sour, bitter taste of panic rises in his throat and he swallows it down with a grimace.

She shakes her head, and he can see her trying to push away the fear and confusion caused by his words. "You were with me last night, Sam. The Halloween party, remember? You wouldn't dress up."

"My family doesn't celebrate Halloween," he says.

"I know it's probably rough for your parents," she says, "but you were just a baby, and--"

He starts humming again. She can't hide the hurt look on her face now, but she doesn't press the issue.

*

If Jess weren't with him, he'd have stolen a car without a second thought, but instead he waits at the Avis counter, tapping his credit card on the scratched Formica surface while they try to find him a car he can drive without having to fold himself completely in half.

They spend the drive in tense silence. She keeps looking at him, but he doesn't know where to start, how to explain: You should be dead, and so should my parents, but Dean is still alive, and I can't let him be dead, too, because even though I wanted this more than anything, I didn't want it without him.

It would be so easy to relax, to let himself slip into this false world where she's still alive, where he has everything he's ever wanted, and paid for it with his brother's life. Instead, he tunes in the local rock station and, to the familiar beat of The Doors and Led Zeppelin, puts the pedal to the floor.

"This isn't your house," she says when he pulls up in front of Missouri's.

"No."

"Whose house is it?"

"A friend's." He turns and cups her face. "I know you think I'm acting crazy, but I'm not--I'm not high, and I don't have a fever." He leans in and kisses her, thinks he could spend the rest of his life kissing her--had planned on it, in fact, before everything got fucked up again--but he has to _know_ what's going on, can't just leave Dean for dead, because Dean is all he has left, and this is just some crazy trick the demon is playing on him, to get him to betray Dean, and he won't do it. He won't.

"Why don't you go and find us a motel room?" he says. "I'll call you when I'm done here."

"A motel room? Why would I go to a motel, when your parents' house is only ten minutes away?"

"I don't want to put them out," he says. It sounds weak even to his own ears, and the look on her face tells him she's not buying it, either. He's usually a much better liar, but it never even occurred to him to go to the house. To go home. He'd never had a home to go to, until he started living with her.

"Don't be ridiculous, Sam. I don't know why you're all freaked out, but I know you well enough to know that you're better off going to your parents than trying to hide from them. They're worried about you as it is. Don't make it worse." He knows there's nothing he can say to make her understand, but he opens his mouth to argue anyway. She isn't having it, though, and before he can say anything, she's kissing him. When she's kissed him nearly senseless, she says, "Do whatever it is you need to do here, and then come home. I'll be waiting."

He gets out of the car, leaves the keys in the ignition. She climbs over the center console and into the driver's seat, and he turns back, kisses her again, desperately, with intent, and she curls her fingers around his wrists, holds on like she's never going to let go. It hurts him, like a punch to the heart, to pull away.

She looks at him with narrowed eyes, not angry, but like she's trying to figure him out, and doesn't have enough information yet. "Sam--"

"I'm sorry," he says helplessly. "But I have to do this."

*

Missouri's house looks exactly the same, magazines scattered on the coffee table, the warm scent of apple pie overlaying the hint of melting wax and burning matches.

She shows her current client out and smiles at Sam for a second as he stands.

"Missouri, please--" he starts

"Oh, honey," she says, leading him back to her office, "I don't know if I can help you, but why don't you tell me what's wrong?"

He sits on the couch, in the same spot he sat the first time they visited her. "You don't remember me." It's not a question.

"No, but you remember me." She taps her lips with her index finger and waits for him to speak.

"My name is Sam Winchester. My family used to live here in town--still does, apparently, except--"

"Winchester," she says. "I think your daddy's worked on my car."

"Yes," he answers. "But no. That's wrong. I--I woke up this morning, and everything is _wrong_. Dean didn't die in a fire twenty-two years ago, our mother did. And Jess--my girlfriend--she's going to die in a fire tomorrow night, unless I do something to stop it." He spills the whole story--the first fire, being trained to hunt, what they've learned about the demon stalking their family. Everything that's happened the past year and a half. "You told my father the truth about what was out there, ma'am. And he raised us to know it, trained us to fight it. And now it's like none of it ever happened."

She doesn't say anything, just cocks her head and studies him for a moment.

He laughs, because he knows how crazy it all sounds, the truth so much stranger than fiction. "You don't believe me."

She slides forward in her seat, takes his hand, and looks him in the eye. "I believe that you believe it," she says, but when he opens his mouth to call bullshit on that, she says, "It's also possible that something did, in fact, happen. You have power in you, Sam Winchester, and you've seen true evil. I can feel it. It's possible you're in some kind of altered state, caused by this demon you say is hunting you. If that's the case, I'm not sure I can help."

He says what she doesn't. "And it's also possible I've had a psychotic break, and I'm crazy."

She inclines her head. "That's always a possibility," she allows, "but I've seen too much to dismiss what you say without checking it out." She walks through the house, pulling on her coat and picking up her purse, and he follows. She keeps up her barrage of questions once they're in the car, giving him no chance to ask where they're going. "Have you had any, hm, has the world flickered at all? Indicated to you that you're not awake? Is anything from what you believe is your true reality intruding on this one?"

"Like déjà vu in The Matrix?" She snorts but nods. He shakes his head. "It's, it's seamless. Like this really is a whole different world, and I'm the only thing that doesn't fit."

"It'd have to be an awfully powerful demon to rearrange reality like this," she says. "But it's not unheard of. Vengeance demons--" She looks over at him. "You didn't make any wishes you shouldn't have, did you?"

"_Wishes_? What, like, a djinn or something?" He knows there's stuff about banishing djinni in Dad's journal, but that, like everything else, is out of his reach here.

She rolls her eyes at him. "No, boy, like a vengeance demon. They're a specific class of demon. They grant wishes to wreak havoc, often to scorned women or abused children looking for vengeance against the ones who wronged them."

"But I'm not--Shit. Last night, Dean was hitting on this woman. She was talking about how her fiancé left her at the altar, and how she wished things had been different, and Dean was, well, being Dean. When she asked him what he wished for, he just shrugged and looked at me."

"You wish for anything, Sammy?" Dean asked, taking a sip of beer. He actually looked serious, instead of mocking, for once, like he wanted to know the answer.

Sam wasn't sure how he was supposed to answer that. Of course he wished for things, wished Mom and Dad and Jess were still alive, wished for safe, for normal, for the security of his father's rough voice and his brother's clear laugh, for the knowledge that everything was going to be all right, that he wasn't going to turn evil or hurt anybody. That he wasn't going to have to hold Dean to his promise. That Dean wouldn't have ever had to make it. 

"Sometimes I wish none of this had ever happened," he said, hoping that was vague enough not to hurt Dean's feelings and still specific enough to keep Dean from asking more questions. "Sometimes, I still wish for normal."

Dean turned to the woman and nodded his head in Sam's direction. "I wish he could have the life he wishes for."

Sam stared at Dean for an uncomfortable moment, surprised, though he supposed he shouldn't be.

"You're so lucky to have such a caring boyfriend," she'd said, patting Sam's hand, and walked away before Dean could correct her.

Sam had laughed at the thunderstruck expression on Dean's face, and hadn't really stopped laughing by the time they got back to the motel. Even lying in bed, listening to Dean singing in the shower, he'd giggled occasionally, because it wasn't like he didn't understand why people thought that, but Dean always seemed so shocked.

"And when I woke up," he finishes, "I was in bed with Jess, in our old apartment."

"Was there anything unusual about this woman? Did anything stand out about her? A tattoo, maybe, or a ring?"

Sam closes his eyes, tries to picture the scene from last night, the woman's pinched face easing with laughter at one of Dean's dumb pickup lines, bright coral mouth curving in a smile that made her pretty. "No, nothing like that. Why?"

"Vengeance demons usually leave talismans behind, something that channels their power, keeps the spell in effect. If we find the talisman and destroy it, it should break the spell."

"And put everything back the way it was."

"That's the theory."

Sam thinks back to the bar again, the woman leaning in close to Dean, one well-manicured hand playing with a silver chain around her neck. "Wait. She did have a locket. It was heart-shaped. She spent a lot of time playing with it."

"That could be it. Keep an eye out for it."

"Yes, ma'am." He answers automatically to the voice of authority, trained to it no matter how much he'd rebelled, and eager to latch onto a solution, fix this before he gets too used to it, before he forgets what's real and what's not. He wonders vaguely if the yellow-eyed demon is involved, or if this is just another example of synchronicity, of weirdness following them because of their awareness of it.

He doesn't have time to ask, because they're pulling up in front of the house, his parents' house, and the prospect of seeing them scares him as much as it excites him. He scrubs his sweaty palms against his jeans and tries to keep his heart from racing.

The rental car is in the driveway, behind a Volvo, and that more than anything strikes him as _wrong_.

"There's no way my dad drives a Volvo," he says. Missouri raises her eyebrows and shakes her head, but Sam is adamant about this. "No way."

"If you say so, sweetie."

*

He rings the bell, and his father opens the door, pulls him into a hug before he can say anything. He still smells like Dad--a hint of leather jacket and motor oil, but no scent of gunpowder residue or burning bones clings to him. He's smiling and his beard is neatly trimmed. He's a little grayer at the temples, but his face doesn't have the hardness to it that Sam remembers, and the lines around his eyes and mouth are more from laughter than from pain.

"Dad," he chokes out, embarrassed because his eyes are tearing up and he can't seem to make himself let go.

And then Dad steps away and a beautiful blonde woman he's seen only in pictures, and once as a ghost, is standing there in blue jeans and a plaid flannel shirt that obviously belongs to her husband, her hair up in a messy ponytail, and her smile so wide and bright he can see Dean in it, and it makes his heart hurt.

"Sam," she says, the way she had the one time he remembers hearing her speak. "Are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost."

He chokes on whatever he was going to say, manages only, "Mom?" before he's hugging her tight. She's alive--he can feel her breath on his neck, the warmth of her skin beneath his hands. "Mom," he says again, not a question this time, but a breath, a prayer, an answer.

"You forget your keys again?" she asks as she leans back in his arms (he can't--won't--let go of her yet), and though the words are casual, her gaze is assessing, green eyes sharp and clear, and _God_, he'd never known how much like her Dean was until now, and he can only imagine how the resemblance must have haunted Dad for so many years.

He finally pulls his hands away, pats his pockets awkwardly. "Yeah, I guess."

"Who's your friend?" she asks.

"Oh. Missouri, this is my mom and dad--Mary and John Winchester. Mom and Dad, this is Missouri Mosley. I, um, Dad, I think you've worked on her car?"

Dad nods, and he and Mom exchange an unreadable glance.

"I'm working on a paper for cultural anthropology," he says, hoping Jess won't rat him out, "and I've been interviewing Missouri about American folklore and folk medicine."

"Nice to meet you," Missouri says, shaking his parents' hands. "You've raised a fine boy."

"Thank you," Mom says, smiling again and patting his arm. "I'm glad we managed to beat some manners into him, finally."

"Since I'm here, I was hoping Missouri could show me one of her cleansing rituals--purify the house of evil influences and intentions," he says, leading the way into the kitchen, where Jess is standing by the stove, stirring a pot that smells like chicken soup.

"Just why are you here, Sam?" Dad asks, pulling out a chair and sitting down at the table. "Not that we're not glad to see you, but don't you have that big interview on Monday? Not exactly the best time to go haring off on a," he smiles at Missouri in a way Sam doesn't recognize, "wild ghost chase."

They all laugh politely at the pun, and Sam realizes he can't tell them the truth, can't tell them anything at all.

"I was just--what happened that night?" he says. "The night--" He stumbles over the words, "The night Dean died."

Mom and Dad exchange a glance. "Why this sudden interest?" Dad asks. "You've heard the story before." He doesn't need to say that it's not a story they like to tell, and it's not one Sam really wants to hear, but he needs to know, and not just because it might help him figure out what's going on.

"I guess, I just--It was my sixth-month birthday, wasn't it? The anniversary is Monday, and I was just... curious."

"I guess it was," his mother says slowly, sitting next to him at the table. Jess and Missouri sit on the other side, and it's almost like having a family, except there's someone missing, and Sam's not sure he ever wants to get used to that empty space in his life, as much as he wants to get used to everything else he's seen so far. "I was in bed and your father was asleep in his chair in front of the television--you know how he gets, won't come up to bed at a reasonable hour--when the alarm went off. I ran to get you, and by the time I got to Dean's room, it was engulfed in flames. I couldn't--" Dad takes her hand, squeezes it tightly. "There was nothing anyone could have done."

"Do you know what started it? The fire, I mean." He keeps his voice steady, as if he's interviewing strangers, done it a hundred times, always better at this part than Dean and Dad.

His parents both look down at their joined hands. Dad answers, his voice low and gravelly. "It was an electrical fire in Dean's room. Faulty wiring, they said. The bedspread caught, and--that was it. He was asleep. He never woke up."

"And you just--what?" The anger creeps in now; he can't understand how they didn't know, didn't _fight_. How things can look so familiar and yet be so different. "Decided to rebuild and stay here? Made a sewing room out of his bedroom?"

"I don't like your tone, Sam," Dad snaps, and that sounds more like the John Winchester Sam's used to.

"We wondered, at first, if it was morbid, or strange, to stay," Mom says, rubbing her fingers over Dad's, blue veins prominent on the backs of her hands, visible through thin, pale skin, the hands of a woman in her fifties. "But this is our home, and--" She shrugs. "We stayed. The fire department salvaged most of the house. It was strange, actually, how little damage there was, outside of Dean's room, and the insurance money paid for the repairs.

"And, I don't know, maybe I hoped," she still won't look at him, and he holds his breath, now, because he knows what she's going to say, "it sounds silly, because I never really believed--I know there's no such thing as ghosts--but maybe I hoped he was still here, in the house somehow, and we couldn't leave him alone." She reaches out with her other hand, takes his and squeezes it. He squeezes back. "He loved you so much, Sam. Always wanted to hold you and play with you. He wasn't jealous, like we'd expected."

Sam swallows hard. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah." He glances at Missouri, who shakes her head--there's no presence in the house. Dean didn't stay, didn't hang around and look out for him.

Sam is almost disappointed.

*

Mom spoons out soup into deep mugs and they all make their own sandwiches, and eat informally, sitting around the table, talking mostly about Sam's future prospects, and whether the Jayhawks will make the Final Four this year--well, Dad talks about the Jayhawks, and Sam nods in bemusement. Dean and Dad used to talk football and baseball, and occasionally hockey, on long night drives on deserted two-lane highways that scrolled across the country, a half-familiar language like the dashed white lines of the road, a Morse code Sam had never been able to fully decipher, but college basketball had never really been on their radar.

When they're done eating, Missouri takes her leave, another round of handshakes and smiles that are awkward in a way Sam's used to but Mom and Dad obviously aren't. He makes plans to see her in the morning, bright and early, to do research for his "paper." Jess frowns at that, but doesn't say anything.

When Missouri is gone, and before Dad can turn the television on or start talking sports again, Sam says, "The Impala?"

Dad's eyes light up. "I was wondering when you'd ask. She's in the garage, but we can take her out for a spin if you want. I may even let you drive, if you ask nicely."

He can't help but be a little thrilled at that, even though he's driven the Impala fairly often in the past year and a half. He tries not to remember the last time he drove it with Dad in the passenger seat, thinks maybe he should let Dad drive instead, even if there is no demon after them here, and no Dean bleeding out in the backseat while he and Dad argue up front.

They're a few blocks from home when Dad shifts, unused to being in the passenger seat, and says, "We're worried about you, Sammy. That phone call this morning, this interest in your brother's death, showing up with a psychic? What's really going on, son?"

Sam takes a deep breath, thinks about spilling the truth, and knows he can't. Anger wells up, that he's got everything he ever wanted, and he can't even enjoy it, that he can't stay and can't go without giving up something--someone. And where the hell is Dean? Usually he's riding to the rescue by now, but Sam's pretty sure he's got to get out of this one on his own, and as much as he likes to think of himself as an independent adult, his first instinct is still to reach out for Dean. He'd managed to control it when he was at school--he'd dial the number but not press talk; he'd listen to his roommate's Metallica CDs and remind himself how much he didn't like them; he'd turned down tickets to the San Francisco Auto Show twice; and he'd pretended to be horrified by guns when one of his friends had invited him to the shooting range, because the sound and smell of the place would only make him think of Dean and Dad and home.

He shakes his head. "Nothing, Dad. Just the usual quarter-life crisis thing, I guess."

"Quarter-life crisis?" Dad sounds amused, and Sam wonders if he's thinking of Vietnam, of what he'd already lived through by Sam's age, not knowing how much more hellish his life would become. He wonders if he's got the right to take this away from Dad, from Mom. From Jess.

"Yeah, you know, is this what I want to do with the rest of my life? Am I going to fail miserably and disappoint everyone I've ever met?" Is my girlfriend going to die a horrible, fiery death if I don't say something? Am I ever going to see my brother again? "That kind of thing."

"Whatever you do, Sammy, you know I'm proud of you, right? Your mother and I--as long as you're happy, you'll never disappoint us, you hear me?"

Sam feels the sting of tears behind his eyes, blinks rapidly to clear it. "Yeah, Dad. I do." He wishes Dean were here, to see Dad like this, hear him say the words instead of having to infer them from the occasional nod and smile and unreliable twenty-three-year-old memories.

"All right, then, enough of that chick flick stuff. Let's open her up and do some driving."

Sam's laugh is a little hoarse, but they both pretend not to notice. "Yes, sir."

*

When they get back to the house, Mom takes him upstairs to make up his bed, while Jess joins Dad in the living room to watch television.

It's all so shockingly, amazingly normal that Sam thinks he's going to throw up. It's everything he ever imagined, and he can't fully enjoy it because Dean isn't there. That was never, ever part of the fantasies he used to spin on long car rides from one haunted nowhere town to another, and the thought that this has happened because of some vague wish he made--that he somehow _wished_ Dean away (he guiltily remembers all the times he called Dean a freak)--makes him sick.

The room--_his_ room--is bright white with blue accents, all traces of any childhood favorite wallpaper gone. There's a bookshelf and a CD rack, a desk with a computer on it, and on the wall, a bulletin board with pictures of him and Jess, and him and Dad, and Mom and Dad, pictures of him with friends from Stanford, and pictures of people he's sure he's never met. There's one picture that's familiar--four-year-old Dean holding a baby--holding Sam--in his lap. Sam looks at it for a long moment as Mom grabs a set of sheets--soft blue flannel--from the linen closet.

"I'm making your father buy us tickets to see Styx and Journey in concert next month. It's the least he can do, since we missed the Allman Brothers over the summer," Mom says as she tucks the fitted sheet around the bed.

Sam looks at her, torn between horror and fascination. "Styx?" he asks weakly, wondering if bad taste in music is genetic, and what that means for him.

"You can make fun all you like, but that's some great music, Sammy, and don't you forget it." She nods at the corner of the sheet still in his hands. "It helps if you put the sheet on the mattress."

He complies without thinking, still too boggled by what she's telling him. "And Dad's okay with this?" Sam can't imagine his father, grim-faced and implacable, at a concert of any kind.

"Well, he's still in mourning for Johnny Cash, but he'll enjoy it. He always does." She wafts the top sheet over the bed and they watch it float down in silence for a moment. "You were conceived after a Van Morrison concert, you know."

"No," he says. "I didn't know that."

She looks at him oddly. "Are you sure? We've told the story a million times--I'd think you'd be sick of hearing it. My sister took Dean for the night, and your father and I rented a hotel room so we didn't have to drive home after the show." She smiles. "It was a good night."

"Dean--" He's not sure what he wants to ask, what he wants to know. Is everything from before the fire the same? Can she tell him what Dean was like as a kid, before there was _DeanandSam_? Can he make her understand how wrong it is that Dean's not here?

Her smile is softer, sadder, now, and she says, "Dean was conceived in the Impala. He loved that car. He didn't sleep well when he was a baby, but we'd strap him into the car, put the radio on, and drive. Twenty minutes later, he'd be out like a light."

"Zeppelin instead of lullabies," Sam murmurs. "It would explain a lot." He wonders if Dean remembers, or if it's an unconscious comfort that led him to choose the music his mother used to soothe him with, if he knows the car was there from the beginning, or if, again, it's some kind of instinctive connection Sam's never quite had.

She laughs. "He used to like to dance with me. When I was pregnant with you, you were a kicker, and he'd say you were dancing too."

"I liked soccer," he offers, unsure, and she reaches up and cups his cheek gently.

"Oh, honey, I know." And of course, she does.

*

He's not sure how he makes it through the rest of the evening, but he laughs a lot, and it feels good to have Jess pressed up against his side, his arm draped around her shoulders, the smell of her shampoo tickling his nose.

When they go to bed, in the double bed in the room that used to be his nursery, he stares up at the ceiling for a long while, Jess curled up next to him, breathing soft and even. He buries his face in her hair, lets his hands roam over her body, soft curves and supple skin, presses hot, open-mouthed kisses to her neck and chest. He slides his fingers down into her panties, and she laughs sleepily.

"Sam! Your parents are right down the hall."

He strokes his fingers over slick, warm flesh and whispers, "Then we'll just have to be really quiet."

Her eyes are bright in the darkness, and her mouth quirks in a mischievous grin as she rolls over and kisses him. Sam lets himself forget everything else for a little while, in the sweet warmth of her body.

*

It's still dark when Sam wakes with a jolt, the dream that seemed so compelling already fading from his memory, even as the feeling of urgency remains. He's still in Lawrence, still in his parents' house. He can hear Jess breathing, softer than Dean's snuffling, which he's gotten used to again over the past year and a half. He slips out of bed carefully; Jess sighs but doesn't wake.

He pulls on a pair of sweats and his sneakers, and fumbles around on the night table for his watch. It's tangled with Jessica's jewelry, and he huffs in frustration as he unwinds a silver chain from around his watch. The locket at the end of the chain is a solid weight in his palm, heavier than expected, the enamel smooth and cool to the touch as he closes his hand around it, snaps the watch onto his wrist.

He doesn't remember Jess ever wearing a locket.

He opens his hand slowly, fishes through the night table drawer for a flashlight, and stares at it, heart-shaped surface covered with a mosaic of bright red and white enamel. It looks familiar, though it takes him a moment to figure out why, to be sure.

"Son of a bitch."

Jess stirs, and he freezes, but she doesn't say anything. He presses a quick kiss to her forehead, and slips out of the room like a ghost.

Missouri is at the door when he gets to her house, wrapped in a burgundy velvet bathrobe and not looking happy to see him.

As she holds the door open, she says, "This better be good, boy. Do you know what time it is?"

He opens his hand, lets the chain dangle from his fingers so the locket hangs in the air between them, swaying like a pendulum.

"The woman in the bar. Her pendant looked like this."

Missouri stares at the heart swinging between them for a long moment, and Sam has the absurd thought that she's been hypnotized when she finally says, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Red and white, heart-shaped. And Jess never wore one. She was really particular about jewelry."

Missouri nods, purses her lips, takes the locket in hand and closes her eyes for a moment. "I'm not getting any reading from it," she says, "but that doesn't mean it's not what we're looking for."

He bites back a growl of frustration, wishes for Dean's homemade EMF meter. "Is there any way to tell?"

She shrugs and grimaces, drops it back into his open palm. "Destroy it, and hope for the best."

He nods. "I've got some salt in the car, and there's bound to be a blowtorch at the garage."

*

It was easy enough to snag the keys to the garage off the board hanging in the kitchen, but it feels weird to actually be in the garage--this place that was--is--his father's, and in another, different life, would probably have been Dean's after him.

"Is there a ritual or something?" he asks as he lays the locket down on the workbench, the bright red and white enamel winking at him like an eye. He pours a small circle of salt around it, and then fills the circle in, until the red is covered under white.

"The salt and burn should take care of it."

He nods, pulls the safety goggles off the hook and slips them on. He fires up the blowtorch, and thinks about how Dean never lets him set stuff on fire if he can help it.

As the enamel and then the silver melts under the blue flame, Sam closes his eyes and whispers goodbye to Mom, to Dad, to Jess.

He doesn't know what he's expecting--something cataclysmic, maybe, a bright light or a pulse of darkness descending, Dean suddenly appearing with a smirk and a stupid joke about it taking him long enough to figure it out--but it isn't this complete absence of change as the locket melts away.

When he's done, he shoves the goggles up onto his forehead, but other than the first rays of morning sunlight starting to creep through the windows, nothing is different.

"Missouri?"

"Oh, sweetie, I don't know," she says, laying a hand on his arm. "Maybe it wasn't the right locket. Or maybe it was something else entirely." Again, she doesn't say, Or maybe you're just crazy, and this is the way it's always been.

And he doesn't say, Maybe I didn't want it enough to cancel out whatever wish Dean made. But the sad look she gives him makes him think she knows.

He scrubs a hand over his eyes, which are stinging, and cleans up the mess he's made as best he can.

In front of Missouri's house, he says, "Okay. I'll come see you later. We can do some research. I can call Bobby, or, or someone." Pastor Jim, Caleb, even Ellen. Someone's got to know something. He doesn't have their numbers memorized--Dean's the one with the ridiculous memory for phone numbers, not him, and the ones Dean didn't know or couldn't remember, they could always find in Dad's journal--but he's pretty sure he can find them if he needs to.

She nods and touches his cheek gently before getting out of the car.

He heads back to the house--he can't quite call it home, as much as he wants to--but can't bring himself to go inside. He ends up going for a run after all, rhythmic pump of arms and legs and lungs to clear his head. The early November air is crisp and clean, and he manages to focus, find some measure of calm, by the time he gets back.

Mom and Dad are up, sitting at the table, mugs of coffee in their hands, when he enters the kitchen, sweaty and thirsty. He grabs a bottle of water from the fridge and leans against the sink, drinking half of it in one long gulp, and then wiping his face on the hem of his shirt.

"Easy there, son," Dad says, looking at him with amusement. "Don't want to make yourself sick."

"I'm fine, Dad. I'm just gonna go for a shower."

Jess is still asleep, so he kisses her again softly before heading into the bathroom.

All of his familiar scars are gone, he notices, and forces himself not to freak out about it, because without those physical reminders, maybe he really is going crazy, imagining some kind of secret alternate life that's way more exciting than the one he appears to have here. It makes him much less annoyed about the pentacle inked onto his left side than he was yesterday--it's currently his only physical link to Dean--but he still scrubs at it with the soap. It fades a little under his assault, going gray on his skin, and that's when the vision hits, sending him to his knees with a cry of pain.

Images flash through his mind, too quick to follow--playing soccer in grammar school, Mom and Dad standing on the sidelines cheering; a summer vacation at Disney World, featuring breakfast with Mickey Mouse; giving the valedictory speech at his high school graduation; visiting Dean's grave, flowers bright against the snow and the gray stone etched with his name.

And then Mom and Dad and Jess are all crowding into the bathroom with him--Mom's turning the water off while Dad's helping him to his feet, easing him over the side of the tub and into the towel Jess is holding out for him. She wraps it around him, holds him tight for a second, before letting go so his mother can do the same thing. He closes his eyes, trying to sort through everything he's just seen, breathing in the soft scent of _Mom_ and _Jess_, and for a few seconds, he can't remember what Dean looks like, or the sound of his laugh. His stomach drops, as if he's got vertigo. He swallows hard and tries not to sway.

"Sam?" Mom cups his face, gives him a good looking over.

"I guess I overdid it," he says, the lie coming too easily, though the hoarse shakiness of his voice is real. "I just need to lie down."

Mom and Dad exchange concerned glances, and Jess looks like she wants to say something, but he just hitches the towel around his hips and slips out of the bathroom.

He lies on the bed, eyes closed, trying to sort through the flood of memories that's just washed over him. It's like he's seeing everything in double exposures now--Mom and Dad at the dinner table here in this house superimposed over him and Dad and Dean in a booth at any of the innumerable diners they'd eaten at growing up; dancing with a pretty redhead at his senior prom superimposed over the night he and Dean raced Dad to the hospital after he'd been nearly ripped to shreds by a harpy.

He twists himself around, tries to get a good look at the fading pentacle on his skin. He gets up and looks at it in the mirror, but that doesn't help. Scrubbing at it has made the lettering indistinct, but it doesn't look Roman, or Greek. He squints at the squiggles on his skin. Hebrew, maybe? Something out of the _Key of Solomon_?

He pulls his clothes on, ignoring the headache, the dizziness, and the nausea, and slips out the window, hoping no one notices he's gone.

*

Missouri doesn't answer when he rings her doorbell, and when he peeks in the window, he can see a couple sitting in her waiting room. She hasn't rearranged her life just for him, and he probably shouldn't have expected her to. He knows Dean would just go barging in and demand to be seen, but Sam can't bring himself to do that, not when there's still so much he needs to figure out.

Since he's going to have to wait to see her, he digs through the new set of memories he's received, and heads towards the cemetery (not Stull, thank God), and finds Dean's grave as easily as if he really has been there every year on Dean's birthday. The grass around the headstone is brown, but the ground is still soft enough for him to shove the green plastic cone into place, the spray of flowers he'd stopped for on the way in looking small and forlorn against the gray stone. He can hear Dean mocking him for bringing flowers, hiding his genuine appreciation, his surprise that anyone would actually remember to do something nice for him once he was gone. Sam traces the chiseled letters, worn smooth by time and weather: Dean Winchester, beloved son, 1979-1983, and the angel carved beneath them, wings flared in flight, in protection. He can only imagine Dean's commentary on that.

There are a lot of things he'd like to say, but in the end, he manages only, "I miss you, man, and I'm gonna make this right."

*

Missouri's at the door this time when he comes back, concerned look on her face.

"Look," he says, raising the hem of his shirt to show her once they're inside. "I tried washing it off, and I had a vision. Or not a vision so much as memories."

"Memories?"

"Of this life. I remembered dinner with my parents, playing soccer, going to prom--all the things I wished for when I was growing up and never had. It's like I have two sets of memories now--what really happened, and what happened here."

She runs gentle fingers over the marks on his skin. "Hmm. This looks familiar."

"I think it's from the _Key of Solomon_," he says. "If we can't figure it out, we can call Bobby. He's another hunter--a friend of my dad's. He's helped us out a lot, and he knows his stuff."

"Hold still, boy," she says, grabbing a pen and a piece of paper from her desk and sketching the design. "The writing is unclear now, but I think you're right."

He gestures towards the computer on the desk. "May I?"

She smiles. "You do have nice manners, Sam. Whoever raised you did right by you."

He laughs, because if there's one thing Dean's never been, it's well-mannered. "He tried."

*

It takes him no more than fifteen minutes to match the rough sketch Missouri made with the pentacle of Jupiter, meant to bring wealth and good luck to the person invoking it. Not a protective symbol, then.

Missouri's flipping through books, humming softly to herself as she reads, frown creasing her forehead.

"There's something we're not thinking of," she says, and he knows exactly what she means, feels like the knowledge he needs is somewhere in his own head, just out of reach.

She goes to the kitchen, comes back a few minutes later with two glasses of iced tea and a couple of sandwiches.

"I wish I had Dad's journal," he mutters after a mouthful of sweet tea. I wish Dean were here. I wish... "Son of a bitch. Wishes, Missouri. Djinni." He shakes his head. Dean always says to trust his gut, and he hadn't. He can almost hear Dean laughing at him and calling him, college boy, saying he's too smart for his own good, always ready to trust books over his own instincts.

He thinks back to the _botánica_, the colorful display of graceful glass bottles for perfumes and oils. Remembers Dean's sudden fascination with them, his sudden focus on them when something caught his eye while Sam was questioning the Jimenezes.

Dean found a genie in a bottle. The ridiculousness of it makes Sam want to laugh. That he spent his wish on this makes Sam want to cry. Or punch Dean out. Probably both, as long as he gets to see Dean again.

Missouri gets up, goes directly to one of her books and flips it open. "Sulieman summoned the djinn and bound it with the pentacle," she reads. "He directed it to grant his wishes, three in number, wealth, health, and happiness, before he set it free." She closes the book, marking her place with a finger, and looks up. "I'll need to pick up a few supplies, but we can summon the djinn--it's bound to you until the pentacle is removed."

"And what? I make a wish?"

She nods, the look on her face unreadable.

*

He can't bring himself to go back just yet, drives around aimlessly for a while, memories that aren't real giving him landmarks--he played basketball in that park, learned to ride his bike on this street, went to kindergarten in that school.

He passes the garage, remembers spending afternoons after school and in the summer there, learning enough about cars to get by, but always more interested in books than engines. That, at least, is the same.

He flicks the radio on, listens to the DJ run through the concert calendar, and tries to imagine his parents in the audience, Dad with his arms crossed over his chest, small grin on his face as he watches Mom laugh and sing along.

He swipes at his eyes, and turns back towards the house.

When he gets there, he sits in the car for a few minutes, preparing himself to say goodbye to his parents, and to Jess.

*

Dad's got the football pre-game show on, and Mom and Jess are nowhere to be found.

"Church," Dad says, shaking his head. "I told Jess she didn't have to go, but you know how your mother is."

Sam nods, remembering a hundred Sunday mornings as a kid when she'd dressed him up and dragged him to church, where he'd sat and tried not to fidget; remembering Dean's words about the way she'd believed, told him angels were looking out for him, and how that faith had been broken by her death.

"You're heading back tonight? Jess said you hadn't bought round trip tickets, but if you've got the interview tomorrow morning..."

"Yeah," Sam answers, startled. He hadn't even thought about going back. He could, though. He could buy a ticket back to California, lock himself and Jess up in a circle of salt until the night was over, and go on with his life. Dean would understand. Dean would _want_ him to, would trade himself--_had_ traded himself for the rest of them, and if Sam stays, no one will ever remember that sacrifice. Which is the only way Sam could live with it. "I--Yeah. I need to get online and do that." He flees upstairs to his room.

He can't stay there, of course. Jess comes up and wraps her arms around him, presses a kiss to his cheek.

"I know you're nervous about the interview," she says, "but you're gonna be awesome, Sam. They're gonna snap you up so fast your head'll spin, just you wait and see." She kisses him again, hitting the corner of his mouth this time as he turns into it, kisses her back eagerly.

"I couldn't do it without you," he murmurs against her lips.

"Sure you could," she says, "but you don't have to. I'm not going anywhere."

He threads his fingers through her hair, holds her close. "I know."

He lets her lead him back downstairs, where Dad's dozing in front of the Chiefs-Chargers game and Mom's puttering around the kitchen. She and Jess start planning Thanksgiving dinner, and Sam sinks down on the couch and lets it all wash over him.

The vibration of his phone startles him, and he jolts out of the half-doze he's fallen into.

"I'm ready whenever you are," Missouri says.

"I'll be right there." He doesn't think he can sit through dinner, knowing what he knows.

He gets up to look for his jacket and Jess follows him. "Sam, where are you going? We have to leave for the airport soon."

Mom and Dad look up from their conversation at that. "Sam?" Mom says, rising from her spot on the sofa.

"I forgot something at Missouri's yesterday. I have to go. I'll be back in a bit." He enfolds his mother in a tight hug, tries to memorize the scent of her hair. "I'm sorry I've been so weird this weekend."

"You're under a lot of stress, Sam," she says, brushing his hair off his forehead. "We understand. When you come back for Thanksgiving, we'll have time for a nice long talk."

Dad claps him on the shoulder. "And don't worry if you blow the interview--there's always room for you at the garage."

"John!"

"I'm teasing, Mary. Teasing. He's gonna knock 'em dead. We all know that. Right, Sammy?"

The open, proud look on his father's face is almost enough to break him, but he swallows hard, finds his voice. "Yeah, Dad."

He lets his mother go long enough to hug his father, closing his eyes and breathing him in, so familiar and so different in this version of the world.

Jess walks him outside, arms crossed over her chest in the chilly November afternoon, and when they reach the car, he wraps his arms around her and kisses her, trying to pour every ounce of feeling--love, sorrow, regret--he's got into the kiss. He pulls back, brushes his thumb over her cheek, her lips, trying to figure out how to answer the question in her eyes.

"Love you," he says, leaning in for another kiss.

"I know," she answers, cupping his cheek. "Be quick and be careful. I don't want to miss our flight."

"Yeah."

He can see her shivering in the rearview mirror until he turns the corner, and he forces himself not to cry.

*

"Hold still," Missouri instructs him, but it feels weird and ticklish to have her drawing on him, strengthening the fading lines and symbols on his skin. Dean's always done it while he's asleep, though now he wonders how in hell he's ever slept through this.

When she's done, he chalks the pentagram on the floor and salts around its edges, while she lights the five candles and sets them at each point of the star.

"You don't have to do this, you know," she says. "You can wash the pentacle off and you won't remember a thing about your other life."

He knows what Dean would do if their positions were reversed (and he's sad that he can't even imagine what Dean's secret perfect life would be, but he knows he'd be a part of it, and can't understand why Dean isn't part of his), knows Dean would do it without thought or indecision, and he's a little ashamed that he's had any hesitation at all, that he could even consider letting Dean make this sacrifice for him, and a little angry at Dean for thinking he'd want him to.

"I've thought about it," he says, "but I can't." He gestures at the pentagram, the candles, the books scattered around the room. "I know too much--I know what's out there in the dark, and I can't pretend I don't, even for the few days it'll take to forget completely. I tried to run from the responsibility once, and it didn't end well. I can't do it again."

She nods and takes his hand, squeezes it gently for a moment. Then, "Djinni are powerful, but the seal and the salt should contain it. Don't break the circle--watch yourself."

He nods, lowers himself to the floor about six inches from the thick salt line he'd poured, and nods again, letting her know he's ready.

She reads the incantation slowly and clearly, making sure not to stumble over the foreign words. A warm wind blows through the room, making the candles flicker, and a smoky whirl appears in the center of the circle, spinning like a cyclone until it resolves into the shape of a woman with long dark hair and shining dark eyes.

"Why have you called me here?" she demands, a soft, unidentifiable accent shaping her words. She narrows her eyes at him and he feels a chill run down his spine, but forces himself to sit straight and still under her scrutiny. "Samuel Winchester. Is your new life not satisfactory? Do you not have everything you wished for?"

"I didn't wish for it," he says. "I want you to make it go away."

Her smile is sharp and thin as a razor. "Your brother and I had a deal. He wanted you to have the normal, happy life you'd always wanted, with no interference from Azazel."

"But he's not here."

"He knew that was a possibility, and made the wish anyway. It is not for you to change the terms of our arrangement. You're not even supposed to remember your other life." He smiles back at her, more a baring of teeth than anything friendly, and raises his shirt to show her the newly darkened pentacle drawn on his skin. She hisses angrily, then says, "He was supposed to use vellum."

"Yeah, it's not exactly something we carry around these days, and skin is skin, right?"

She hisses again. "This is most irregular."

Sam takes a deep breath, holds onto his temper. He's not sure if he's angry at her or at Dean, and it's not really a good idea to piss off something as powerful as a djinn, even if they've got it contained in a salted circle for the moment. "I've summoned you. By the rules of your people, that means you owe me a wish, right?"

She nods curtly. "Yes."

He's thought about what he wants, how to phrase it, because he knows too many stories of wishes gone awry, of people who wished foolishly, who asked for what they thought they wanted and got something else entirely in return.

"Well?" she asks, impatient. "Do you know what you want or are you just wasting my time with your chicanery?"

He takes another deep breath and silently asks Jess, Mom, and Dad for forgiveness before he says, "I wish for you to put the world back the way it was right before Dean made his wish."

She doesn't nod and blink, or wrinkle her nose, or anything else that he can see, but suddenly instead of sitting on the floor in Missouri's basement, he's lying on the soft, creaky bed in the motel room he and Dean had rented two nights ago.

Dean is standing over him with a sharpie in one hand and a pretty, blue cut-crystal bottle he must have pocketed in the _botánica_ when Sam wasn't looking in the other.

As Dean leans toward him, Sam levers himself up and takes a swing, fist connecting with Dean's face with a satisfying thump, and Dean goes sprawling backwards, ass over tea kettle.

"Ow! What the fuck, Sammy? What the hell was that for?"

Sam gets up off the bed so he can loom over Dean. "For making that wish, you stupid, selfish bastard."

"How do you know about that? I haven't even done it yet. And if it works, we shouldn't even _be_ here right now."

"It did work, but I had to summon up the djinn and wish it away."

"Why the fuck would you do something like that? And you call me stupid?"

"You weren't there, you moron. You were dead!"

"Oh." Dean rubs his temple thoughtfully, making no move to get up off the floor. He's probably going to have one hell of a shiner in a little while. "She did say that might happen. Did I at least die heroically? Saving some cheerleaders or the world or something?"

Sam stares down at him, itching to hit him again, but instead he offers him a hand up. Dean must sense the split in his intentions because he hesitates a few seconds before grabbing Sam's hand.

"You died in an electrical fire when you were four," Sam grinds out, yanking him up more roughly than is strictly necessary, and ignoring Dean's grimace in response. "The night of my six-month birthday."

"Oh," he says again. "Mom?"

"Mom was fine. Dad was fine. It was all _fine_. Safe and happy and _normal_."

Dean shakes his head, drops down onto the other bed. "Then I don't understand. What the hell is your problem? You had everything you ever wanted."

"_You weren't there_." He doesn't know how to make Dean understand. "I didn't ask for it, Dean. I didn't ask for you to sacrifice yourself in some stupid, noble gesture so I could have a normal life. What makes you think I would even _want_ that?"

"Sammy, you spent the first eighteen years of your life bitching about how you wanted normal, you wanted safe, you wanted happy. You wanted the little white house with the white picket fence and two loving parents and a dog. Now, suddenly, when you finally get a chance to have it, you don't want it? I don't believe it."

"I never wanted you to _die_ so I could have it, Dean. I didn't ask for it, and I certainly wouldn't choose it, okay?"

"Tonight, I asked you flat-out, pointblank what you wished for, and that's what you said."

"Yeah, I did, but I didn't mean--I didn't want it without you, man. I didn't want it at that price."

"We could die any time with this job, Sammy, you know that."

Sam grunts in frustration and starts pacing. "And we do our best to see that it doesn't happen. But you threw your life away _for me_. How was I supposed to live with that?"

"Well, you weren't even supposed to remember it--"

"That doesn't matter!"

Dean looks genuinely hurt and confused, and Sam doesn't think it's just because he took a punch to the face. "I was saving you, Sam. I was keeping my promise." He looks down, away, and Sam forces himself not to feel guilty for extracting that promise, knows it was necessary, even if Dean still refuses to believe it. "You got to have the life you wanted, with no interference from the demon at all. No worries about going dark side. I knew as soon as I saw it what the bottle was, and I knew I could use it to keep you safe."

"How did you feel when you realized what Dad had done to save your life?"

Dean's answer is quick and absolute. "That's different."

"It's really not."

"Yes, it is." Now Dean sounds pissed off, and Sam can't believe he's going to argue.

"How? How is it any different, Dean?" Sam stops in front of him and throws his arms out wide, resisting the urge to grab Dean by the front of his shirt and shake some sense into him. "We don't fuck with the natural order of things. You've told me that since before I was old enough to even understand what it meant, and then you go and get a djinn to completely rearrange the world. How is that different?"

"Because it was for you." Dean's voice is low, and there's something sad in it, and true. Dean believes what he's saying, and that resonates in Sam's bones. "I knew you were freaked out after the thing with Meg and what happened with Jo, and that you were upset we hadn't found any trace of Ava at all. I wanted to take all that away, make it easier on you."

Sam sinks down onto his bed, facing Dean, their knees bumping in the narrow space between the beds, all his anger diffused by the quiet conviction of Dean's words.

"I know, but you can't, okay? You can't just make it all go away."

"But I can. I did." He cocks his head. "Well, the djinn did. She was kind of hot, too, don't you think?"

"You're unbelievable." Sam shakes his head incredulously.

"I still don't understand why you remembered. It was supposed to be a clean switch."

Sam lifts his t-shirt and twists. "If you hadn't been too cheap to go out and buy some parchment, I wouldn't have."

Dean huffs a small laugh. "My own damn fault then."

"Oh God, Dean, get down off the fucking cross, okay? Somebody else needs the wood."

"Look, Sam, I don't really care what you think about this, but let me make one thing clear to you. If I see a chance to protect you, to keep you from becoming whatever the hell it is you're afraid of becoming, I am going to take it. And you can bitch and moan about it all you want, but that's just the way it's going to be, and you can't stop me."

"I don't want you to die for me, Dean. Not if there's a way I can prevent it, and _you_ can't stop _me_ from doing that."

"I guess we know where we stand, at least." Dean scrubs a hand through his hair and gives another small laugh. "I could really use a beer."

Sam sighs, knowing that the conversation is over. For now, anyway. "Mom and Dad were pretty cool," he says. "Did you know you were conceived in the Impala?"

Dean grins at him, genuine pleasure lighting up his face, and the room. "Dude. How awesome is that?"

"Pretty freaking awesome, Dean."

"Yeah." Dean gets up, rests his hand on Sam's shoulder for a few seconds, the warm weight of it comforting and familiar. "All things being equal, Sam, I'm glad I'm not dead."

Sam smiles up at him. "Me, too, Dean. Me, too."

He drops back against the pillows, exhausted after everything that's happened. He knows the false memories will fade with the ink on his skin--knows it's easier that way--but he's glad he had them for a little while. As he closes his eyes and starts to drift off to sleep, he remembers the feel of his parents' arms around him, and the scent of Jessica's perfume, and knows those memories will stay.

It's more than he had before, and even though it hurts to lose something he never really had all over again, he knows there was no other choice he could have lived with.

End

~*~

**Author's Note:**

> this story was inspired by thepurpleswitch's [**White Pony**](http://thepurpleswitch.livejournal.com/516685.html?style=mine).
> 
> I started writing this story on [**January 21**](http://musesfool.livejournal.com/1287292.html), and then it got pushed aside by Remix and then girl!Sam, but then I read some spoilers for episode 2.20, in which Dean has a run-in with a djinn and wakes up in an alternate version of his life, where he lives in an apartment in Kansas and Sam is in law school ("What Is and What Should Never Be"), and lo, I squeed loudly, because this NEVER happens to me, and I vowed to finish the story as soon as possible.


End file.
